Friday Five: Women of the Odyssey

I'm in the middle of rehearsals for The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood, which is a retelling of The Odyssey, focussing on Penelope, who was left behind while Odysseus went off to war and then travelled around having adventures rather than returning to her in a timely manner. I'm co-producing and directing the play which will be on at the Courtyard Studio in Canberra from 7-17 July. I have always loved mythology and the value of storytelling, so have thoroughly enjoyed providing a bit of context to some of the characters mentioned in the text. 

5 Female Characters mentioned in The Penelopiad

Pallas Athena (1898) by Gustav Klimt

1. Athena, also spelled Athene, in Greek religion, is the protector of Athens, and the goddess of war, handicraft, and practical reason – her Roman equivalent is Minerva. She was essentially urban and civilised, the antithesis in many respects of Artemis, goddess of the outdoors.

 She was the daughter of Zeus, produced without a mother – the myths tell how she emerged fully-formed from Zeus’s head, after he swallowed Metis (the goddess of counsel) when she was pregnant with Athena. Being the favourite child of Zeus, she had great power.

She represents the intellectual and civilised side of war and the virtues of justice and skill. In the Iliad, Athena is the divine form of the heroic, martial ideal: she personifies excellence in close combat, victory, and glory. The qualities that lead to victory are found on the aegis, or breastplate, that Athena wears when she goes to war: fear, strife, defence, and assault. Athena appears in Homer’s Odyssey as the Odyssey’s goddess guardian. As the guardian of the welfare of kings, Athena became the goddess of good counsel, of prudent restraint, and practical insight as well as of war. She is often depicted in art with armour, a golden helmet, a shield, and holding a spear. Her armour is the aegis made, in some accounts, from the skin of a Giant, hung with tassels of gold, and featuring the head of the Gorgon given to her by Perseus.

Athena became the goddess of crafts and skilled peacetime pursuits in general. She was particularly known as the patroness of spinning and weaving. That she ultimately became allegorized to personify wisdom and righteousness was a natural development of her patronage of skill.

Circe Offering the Cup to Ulysses (1891) by John William Waterhouse

2. Circe is a sorceress known for her vast knowledge of potions and herbs, and her ability to use these enchantments to transform her enemies, and those who offended her, into animals. In myths she is known to turn an Italian king who spurned her advances into a woodpecker, and when a sea-god preferred the nymph, Scylla, to her, Circe poisoned the water where her rival bathed and turned Scylla into a dreadful monster.

In the Odyssey she is described as a beautiful goddess surrounded by tame wolves and lions. She lures any who land on her island to her home with her lovely singing while weaving on an enormous loom, and then drugs them so that they change shape. When Odysseus visits her island, she invites his crew to a feast and turns them into swine - Odysseus is protected by Athena from drinking the drugged wine that effects the transformation, and he is able to rescue his men, although he then remains on the island for over a year and has several sons by Circe.

She became representative of the results of drunkenness and gluttony over abstinence and self-control. Because she made men lose their reason and act like lustful beasts she was accused of witchcraft and considered the archetypal seductress and whore - clearly female sexual desire was perverted and the poor men couldn't possibly remain chaste and faithful in the face of such evil. 

It has been argued that the fairy Titania, in William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, is an inversion of Circe. In this case the tables are turned and she is made to love an ass after, rather than before, he is transformed into his true animal likeness. Naturally, feminist interpretations reveal her in a more flattering light, and in her poem of 1870, the English poet Augusta Webster posits that when she met Odysseus and his men Circe did not turn them into pigs but merely removed their disguise which made them seem human.

The Three Fates (circa 1855) by Paul Thumann

3. The Three Morai also known as the Three Fates, are three goddesses who determine the course of human life. According to Thomas Bullfinch in Bullfinch's Mythology, they are described as the daughters of Night – to indicate the darkness and obscurity of human destiny – or of Zeus and Themis (Law), that is ‘daughters of the heavens.’ They were Clotho, who spun the thread of life; Lacheisis, who held it and fixed its length; and Atropos, who cut it off.”

Stephen Fry in his book, Mythos, instructs, "Their name derives from a word that means ‘portion’ or ‘lot’ in the sense of ‘that which is allotted to you’. ‘It was not her portion to be loved’, or, ‘It was his lot to be unhappy’, are the kinds of phrases Greeks employed to describe attributes or destinies apportioned by the Moirai. Even the gods had to submit themselves to the Fates’ cruel decrees.”

He continues, “The Fates seldom allowed glory and triumph without the accompaniment of suffering and sorrow... The Greeks felt that for every individual there was a personal, singular moira that could be expressed as a mixture of necessity, doom, justice and fortune. Something between luck and kismet.” Isn't it interesting that the Greeks had a world of gods doing terrible things to humans (raping, abducting, torturing...) and it's the women who get blamed?

The Delphic Sibyl (detail from the Sistine Chapel) (1509) by Michelangelo

4. The Oracle “answers from the gods to questions from mortals seeking knowledge or advice on the future. They were usually given in equivocal form so as to fit an event. Also the places where such answers were given forth by a priest or a priestess.” - Thomas Bullfinch

“In a trancelike state of prophetic ecstasy the priestess would sit out of sight on her interrogator, above a chasm in the ground which channelled down to the womb of the earth itself, and call her ambiguous prognostications up into the chamber above where the anxious petitioner awaited her proclamation… Oracle never lies, but nor does (s)he ever give a straight answer, finding it amusing to reply with another question or a riddle so obscure as only to make sense when it is too late to act upon it.” - Stephen Fry

Lilaia the Naiad (2013) by Annie Stegg

5. Naiads are water nymphs of lakes, rivers and fountains. They derived their vitality and in turn gave life to the water in which they dwelled. Generally speaking, Naiads were not considered to be the most helpful of nymphs, for they could be vengeful when angered.